This invention relates generally to golf club bags and golf club bag inserts for facilitating the orderly arrangement of golf clubs. In particular, the invention is directed to a golf club separating tube including means for resiliently retaining a golf club handle within the tube.
Golf bags come in a variety of shapes and sizes and are additionally manufactured with a variety of special features which enhance their usefulness on the golf course. For example, many golf club bags have sophisticated designs for ensuring the orderly arrangement and separation of the golf clubs within the open end of the golf bag. To a golfer, nothing is more disconcerting then attempting to pick out a particular club from a group of entangled clubs in the bag. Furthermore, when the clubs are allowed to bunch together, and are subjected to the inevitable vibration and jarring involved in transporting the clubs in the back of a car or in a golf cart, the clubs will repeatedly rub together and become marred.
In an attempt to alleviate this problem, golf club manufacturers have taken two basic approaches. In very expensive bags, the manufacturers provide, as an integral portion thereof, an apertured closure device disposed at the normally open end of the bag so that the golf clubs may be inserted in the apertures and retained in an orderly fashion. The second approach used on less expensive bags, where it is economically unjustifiable to provide an integrally molded apertured member, the manufacturer will provide a plurality of ribs extending transversely across the normally open end of the bag, the ribs tending to divide the open end of the bag into two or three compartments by which the golfer may classify his clubs, as for example by woods in one section, and irons in another. These ribs are better than no compartments at all, but of course do not adequately segregate the individual clubs from one another.
Unfortunately, these two approaches only provide a solution to the golfer who owns an inexpensive golf bag and who has reached the decision that a new golf bag is necessary for his full enjoyment of the game. Thus, a class of golf bag inserts has developed, providing inexpensive solutions to the problem of golf club placement in a conventional golf club bag through the provision of insertable elements including golf club receiving tubes and racks. Golf club tubes are elongate tubular plastic members which are used to fill a conventional golf club bag and create a series of compartments for insertion and separation of the golf club handles and shafts. Sometimes these tubes are used in conjunction with tube sheets for further separating the golf club handles and shafts and racks for receiving, and orderly separating the heads of clubs. Although these arangements solve the problems of keeping the golfer's clubs separated under normal conditions, these golf club inserts and the two previously discussed types of golf bags, including built-in golf club separators, cannot solve the problem of retaining the golf clubs and preventing their damage in the case of a golf bag spillover.
As opposed to golf bags, the prior art also reveals a class of golf club holders comprising a plurality of elongate tubes having one end open and adapted for receiving a golf club handle and shaft. Often these holders are included in an assembly wherein a plurality of such holders are secured in a generally parallel array but one or more tube sheets. Often the assembly is provided with wheels and/or handles for facilitating transport. Examples of these types of golf club holders are found in the prior art that include metal spring clips disposed at the bottom of the tubes for securing the golf club handles within the tubes. Although these metal spring clips solve the spillover problem, prior art golf club holders of this type do not include racks for ensuring that the heads of the clubs do not interfere. Furthermore, the addition of a metallic clip to the bottom of an elongate golf club receiving tube of the type usually only having one open end is time consuming, and expensive.